In mid-October, the New York Times published an essay – not an article, mind you – by Dennis Overbye on the Large Hadron Collider, located outside of Geneva. The science writer reported that a pair of otherwise reputable theoretical physicists had developed a novel theory about why the LHC was doomed to failure in the quest to create a Higgs boson. The two men contended that . . . well . . . time-traveling particles from the future were sabotaging the collider.

The physicists, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan,theorized that the Higgs boson – an elusive particle that may help physicists understand why mass exists and enable them to continue to get multi-billion dollar funding -is “so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather,” wrote Mr. Overbye.

What’s interesting is that the two scientists postulated this phenomenon several months before the LHC’s 2008 test-run that led to a catastrophic blowout between two magnets. (By catastrophic, I’m talking multi-ton pieces of equipment flying around like paper in a windstorm.)

Their theory stretches beyond simple mechanical errors. They think it - in the guise of “bad luck” – may explain why the Superconducting Supercollider in the U.S. was cancelled after billions of dollars were spent on it, a phenomenon one described as an “anti-miracle.” (They’re not quite sure these rogue time-traveling particles had anything to do with a French physicist on the LHC project who was recently arrested for conspiracy with Al Qaeda, but those particles are sneaky.)

Contemporary theory in physics apparently allows for time travel nowadays. (Clearly, pharma scientists have fallen into a “mind-bending theory gap” in your battle with physicists; get on the ball, you guys!) Could it be true? Are Higgs bosons from the future – or their agents – messing with the past? And what about other scientific breakthroughs? Sure, we’ve all seen the intensely messed-up paradox of the first Terminator movie, but what if there are other particles or agents of the future that are traveling back in time to “clean things up”?

I mean, what if Acomplia actually worked better than Sanofi-Aventis thought? Perhaps it led to a future where people lost weight and quit smoking. But what if that in turn led to a future where the world economy collapsed because the population was surviving to a later and later age, and healthcare and retirement funding couldn’t keep up with them, while sin taxes from tobacco plummeted!?

Maybe some time-traveling particles came back and fudged the Phase III data in the U.S. and the post-approval studies overseas to make the side effects look worse than they were! Unbeknownst to us, we were saved from extended lifespans of poverty. (Albeit slim and dashing poverty.)

And, maybe if we had global harmonization of GMPs, it would lead to a terrible future where . . .um . . . well, I don’t know, but surely there has to be some extratemporal skullduggery to prevent that from happening. Perhaps it’s a replay of the Tower of Babel story, our first precedent that we’re not meant to be all on the same page.

Those of us who aren’t elementary particles have to keep muddling forward in our varying states of blindness. The past is something we learn from, but can’t change. Yet.

[BONUS! A few days after this went to process, the LHC suffered another setback when its cryogenic cooling system malfunctioned due to . . . a hunk of baguette that was sitting atop an electrical connection. I told you:those future-particles are crafty. And apparently they’re not on the Atkins diet.]

All That Future

In 2010 (talk about time travel!), we plan to expand nitesh_cp.rodpub.com with a revamped website featuring easier navigation, online exclusive columns and articles, podcasts, and more!

In the meantime, why don’t you head over to our whitepapers page and download the new whitepaper, Rapid Growth of Full Time Equivalent Staffing Programs, submitted by Lancaster Laboratories?

See you next year!

Gil Y. Roth has been the editor of Contract Pharma since its debut in 1999.